


Postage Due

by BMP



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Christmas In July | Christmas Out Of Season, Gen, Old West
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2057970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BMP/pseuds/BMP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a gift for the fandom stocking hung up at Mag 7 Daybook for Christmas in July</p><p> </p><p>Now for the summary:   Fever dream and waking up</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postage Due

**Author's Note:**

> These characters do not belong to the author (but if it were our sandbox, we’d let YOU play in it…) That said, this story was written purely for self entertainment and no money is being made, has changed hands, or has been paid out for the contents therein. Special thanks to V for being a ruthless and eagle-eyed critic and an extraordinary cheerleader all at the same time. Special thanks to GSister, since without her patience and insistence, I never would have posted anything.
> 
> ~Constructive Criticism will be passed on to the author  
> ~Flames will be used to toast marshmallows

**Postage Due**  


He recognized the fever dream the moment it started. It always went just this way, which was how some lucid part of him knew he must be in a bad way.

In the dream, he was awake, but his eyes were closed. He knew if he opened them, he would see the white lace curtains rippling gently in the breeze from the open window, and the light outside would be golden. The breeze brought the sweet smell of freshly cut hay and another scent that always reminded him of baking bread and white shirts snapping on a clothesline. 

Sounds drifted in from outside. Men’s voices at a distance rose and fell in unconcerned conversation. Bees hummed in the flower beds below. He envisioned the rows and clusters of blooms. To actually see them, he’d have to get up and go to the window, or maybe go down the stairs, but he stayed put. He knew them by heart.

He took a moment to revel in the cool of the breeze and the feel of linens, smooth and clean under his hands and around his legs and bare feet, his head cushioned on a soft, dense feather pillow. He knew the bedclothes were white and fine, and there would be a quilt all done in blues and yellows, painstakingly stitched and tied, and neatly folded at the foot of the bed. If he stretched just one foot as far down toward the footboard as he could, he would feel the weight of it. But he didn’t bother. 

His eyes stayed closed. He lay unmoving, drowsy and comfortable, and felt the breeze and the sheets and listened to the voices and the bees. But little by little, he realized his ears were listening carefully for another sound. 

And then it came. The squeak of the door hinge and then the light, quick step of her shoes on the floorboards. 

He opened his eyes just a crack.

She looked the way she always did in his dream. She wore her everyday working clothes, a white blouse and a prim blue skirt with a white apron to protect it. Her golden hair was twisted into a smooth and careful knot. He knew if it were undone, it would flow past her waist in a shining cascade, soft as corn silk. He had been allowed on occasion to run her hairbrush through it. She had laughed and then turned him right around and ran the same brush through his own unruly yellow mop. So like hers and yet so different. He never thought about that, but the memory came to him like clockwork whenever he had this dream. 

She came around the side of the bed, stepping softly and carrying a crockery bowl of sweet-smelling liquid with a folded white cloth draped carefully over the side. She set the bowl on the bedside table and began to roll up her sleeves.

There wasn’t enough size to him to take up the whole bed and he didn’t even have to shift over to make room for her to sit down. The tick went down under her weight. She clucked at him as her long, clever fingers made quick work of folding the sheet down to his waist.

The breeze raised prickles on his flesh, but he ignored it and focused his eyes on her face. 

She was beautiful. She had an oval face and green eyes with crinkles in the corners that let her smile sometimes just with her eyes. Her lips curled into that shape folks called a cupid’s bow, but to him they always looked like they were just on the verge of a smile. He had always been able to tease out those smiles, earning them one at a time. 

She swirled the cloth in the sweet-smelling liquid and wrung it out carefully. Then she dragged it across his forehead and down his neck and over his bare chest, cooling and comforting, humming as she went. Could have been a hymn. Could have been nothing at all. He didn’t know. But he could hear everything exactly, her voice, the rhythm of the tune, the tinkling splashes and trickles of the water in the bowl, the sleepy drone of bees and the hum of men’s voices, even the whicker of a horse. 

The curtains billowed white and lacy, and the breeze and the light and the sounds cocooned him. Before he knew it, his eyes had closed again. And he was floating, effortlessly, powerlessly, bonelessly away.

The part of him that was not dreaming urged him to wake up. To be alert. It warned him. It whispered at him urgently. There was danger in lying here drowsing and unaware.

He ignored it, let it go, and drifted on, telling himself that when he did wake up, things would be a damn sight better than when he went to sleep.

His conscience pricked him at thinking cuss words in front of her. One of the bad habits life had since given him that he wouldn’t want her to know about.

Before he could think much further, the hands soothed him and the humming carried him all the way into sweet nothingness.

 

***7777777***

 

Chris Larabee awoke with a dry, prickly throat, a harsh cough and an ache in his head. He pried open his sticky eyes to see his small rented room at the boarding house. He rolled over on the narrow bed and breathed in experimentally. 

He was in a sorry state, but still a whole lot less miserable than yesterday when he took himself off to bed. He squinted at the light outside the window, grey-white and bright enough to hurt his eyes, and hoped it had only been yesterday. ‘Course, a longer stint might explain why his head hurt quite so much. And it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d dropped a day or two.

His hand dangled over the side of the bed and he let it drift there as he tried to recall the song she was singing.

He was not surprised that he couldn’t.

He threw back the covers and reached for his boots, but in the end it was all too much effort and he slept the afternoon away, too.

 

***7777777***

 

It was morning again when he opened the door to stop that damn pounding.

Vin stood grinning in the hall, a bundle in his hand. “Nathan said to come up here and make sure you ain’t starved to death.”

Chris grinned back at that. He knew his hair was standing on end and his union suit was in rough shape. He felt filthy down to his toenails, having spent at least a couple of days stewing in his own juices.

But he was up now and the headache was tolerable.

Vin handed him the bundle and a bottle of whiskey and gave him another grin.

Chris didn’t know whether he was more grateful for the food, the whiskey, or for bein’ left alone. He decided it was dead even and left it at that.

 

***7777777***

 

“You fit company to be seen with?” Buck asked.

“No,” Chris answered, barely looking up from the table.

Buck sprawled happily into the empty wooden chair beside him anyway, long legs taking up more than his fair share of the foot space under the table. 

“Look better,” Buck said after a minute. He grinned cheekily. “Smell better, too, I bet.”

Chris could only nod at that, feeling the damp spot at the back of his collar where his hair dragged against it.The bath house didn’t smell anywhere near as good as the liquid in the crockery bowl, but it did the trick. And he felt a sight better after cleanin’ up. 

“Anythin’ happen while I was asleep?” he asked. He took a grateful sip of strong, hot coffee from the battered cup Inez had set at his elbow almost as soon as he sat down. He thought about crockery and china tea cups.

Buck shrugged one shoulder. Too tom-cat lazy to shrug both. “Nothin’ we couldn’t handle,” he said smugly, shoving one hand into the waistband of his pants and tilting more comfortably to one side. Looked like he was settlin’ in to stay a while.

“Wanna go get a bottle?” Chris asked.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Buck said jovially, rising from the chair like it was a burden to get up once he had settled in all comfortable. 

Old habit, Chris mused. Waitin’ ‘till someone else was paying. Chris suspected that more often than not in the last ten years, he’d been the one doin’ the buying. It didn’t trouble him none then. Still didn’t.

He tapped his fingers thoughtfully against the blank paper laid out smooth in front of him. It was part of a fine set he kept folded carefully in a leather envelope inside his saddle bags. Had it a long time. It hadn’t seen much use. But there was a promise that needed to be kept.

He rolled the pen between his fingers for a moment before dipping the nib decisively into the borrowed bottle of India ink and beginning the job at hand.

“What’s got you concentrating so hard?” Buck asked, sounding amused and impatient.

Chris looked up to see him holding out an amber-filled shot glass. The bottle was already on the table. The label told him it was a step or two higher than what Buck would have picked on his own nickel. Buck must think he was still a ways under the weather to try to put that one over on him. Buck cleared his throat and Chris realized he’d probably been standing there holding out that glass long enough to explain the impatience.

Chris took it from him and grunted a distracted thank you.

Buck tossed back his own shot with a satisfied sigh. He did not slump back into his chair, however. Instead he tilted his head. The better to read the paper, Chris realized.

He made no move to drink his whiskey or to cover his words as he went on writing. 

_Dear Mother,_  
 _I know it has been some time since you heard from_  
 _me. You know the reasons for that. You can write me care_  
 _of the telegraph office here in town. They’ll know how to find me._  
 _Looks like I’ll be here a while._

He looked up to see Buck shamelessly finishing his reading. 

“Well,” Buck said and then grinned just as shamelessly.

Chris looked at him, unblinking, until Buck grinned even wider and made some excuse about seein’ whether J.D. had the jail well in hand.

“Leave the bottle,” Chris said without looking up.

Buck grumbled a little, but he put the whiskey back. He hooked both thumbs in his waistband and went out whistling jauntily.

Chris shook his head at that and re-read what he had written. Then he dipped his pen to move on. 

So far, he decided, it was a good beginning.


End file.
